


As the Dead Live and Breathe

by samiraxlula



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Detective Comics (Comics), Red Hood: Lost Days
Genre: Bruce Wayne Tries to Be a Good Parent, Bruce Wayne Whump, Canon Compliant, Catatonic Jason Todd, Creepy Bruce Wayne, Dead Jason Todd, Flashbacks, Gen, Grieving Bruce Wayne, Jason Todd is Robin, Kidnapping, Long-Suffering Jim Gordon, Post-Batman: A Death in the Family, Post-Killing Joke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:28:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26097901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samiraxlula/pseuds/samiraxlula
Summary: In the months following the murder of Jason Todd, Batman has returned to his roots as a dark and terrifying creature of the night. However, when a former classmate of his son is kidnapped, the world's greatest detective is forced to recall certain painful memories in order to save him.
Relationships: Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Jim Gordon & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 7
Kudos: 58





	1. Nay, But Thy Son is the Dead

> 9:07 P.M. / PRESENT DAY

The commissioner's office in the Gotham City Police Department headquarters was as sparsely decorated as James Gordon could manage. 

On his desk were three framed pictures—one of his daughter Barbara alone, one she had taken with him and another one with his son, James Jr., taken long ago and in better days. 

They were all taken in better days.

On the wall hung the mandatory professional certificates, and a few photos of him receiving awards of some sort from one mayor after the other, but little else beyond that. 

Sliding open his desk drawer and taking out a pack of cigarettes, the Commissioner had once again given up his attempts at quitting despite having promised Barbara that he’d quit years ago. But she had been walking around then. Before the Clown.

Clutching the pack in his hand and looking down on it with a conflicted look in his eyes, Jim only huffed before placing them back into the drawer when he heard the telltale sound of the vertical blind’s clattering with the summer night breeze, despite having closed the window a few hours ago.

The older man kept his face a study in serenity—a face that effectively hid a growing sense of unease about the man who was slowly but surely becoming a grimmer version of the Batman he knew if that was even thought to be possible only just at the start of this year.

Though admiration was often the first emotion when faced with the Dark Knight—to watch the man who never slowed, never stopped—it was admiration, however, that quickly curdled to unease and then to distrust.

For a man who never sleeps, never tires, never stops is not truly a man, particularly when there is a dark shadow looming over him at all times. He was someone who was always looking into the darkness and usually saw monsters staring back at him.

Then he chased them.

How does one not fear a man who will not only go to those lengths but actively plans for every possible situation where he might have to?

“You called?” His voice was heavy with just-below-critical-mass tension, the dividing line between his dark presence and the room’s dim light impossible to determine, a shadow amongst shadows.

“Missing persons case,” Gordon got straight to business, handing the vigilante a file that he had laid out on his desk for him. “African-American male. Fifteen. He’s been missing for two weeks now and any leads we had went cold with nothing new turning up.”

“Hrn.” Batman grunted as he accepted the file, his mouth a hard, straight line above a strong exposed jaw, which was the only part of his face left uncovered by his forbidding disguise.

“Tina Brinks, the boy’s mother, has hired half a dozen PI’s to try to find the boy but they’ve all turned up nothing as well. Mother’s on the verge of being hospitalized for stress.”

“ _Brinks?_ ” Batman intoned with a hint of recognition, the opaque white lenses that concealed his eyes snapping up from the file to the unnoticing Jim’s face.

“That’s the name. Kid’s apparently a violin prodigy as well and plays for his church when he’s not performing at concerts.”

But Batman—no, _Bruce_ , already knew that about Donald Brinks. 

After all, it had taken three days to get the chemical stains out of their uniforms when he and Jason had been working on their out-of-hand science project together for the Gotham Academy school fair.

“I’ll look into it.” Batman nodded, his stern voice holding even more of an edge than usual as he turned to leave.

“Batman?” The Commissioner called, making the solitary figure pause in his step. “Piece of advice before you go. Life must always go on. The dead are beyond pain but...the living deserve to be spared as much of it as possible.” 

When he looked up, however, the Batman was gone, leaving only behind the vertical blinds gently clattering against one another in the breeze.

“...and I’m sorry about your son.” James Gordon rubbed his eyes tiredly underneath his glasses.

*

> 12:03 P.M. / MAY 19TH / TWO YEARS AGO

The gymnasium was decently packed and kids dressed in their school uniforms of khakis and blue button-downs were running around placing finishing touches on their projects while teachers made their circuits, judging the exhibits presented. 

A few parents and outsiders were present as well as the science fair had always been open to visitors, being a sort of boasting showcase for the academy’s best and brightest and subtle recruitment for new enrollment.

One of these visiting parents was a tall, handsome man who kept his jacket slung over his arm as he strolled through the cluster of poster boards. Having managed to slip out from Wayne Enterprises to stop by the fair, a genuine smile tugged at his mouth upon finding who he had been looking for.

“Hello, Jason.” His obvious fondness for the boy was written in his expression as his adoptive son turned around to greet him with an equally happy look.

“Bruce, you made it!” The thirteen-year-old greeted before quickly introducing his project partner. “This is Donald. Donald, this is my dad.” 

Jason seemed excited to have made a friend, of which he didn’t have many in a school he once said was ‘full of spoiled, rich bullies.’ It seemed to help that they both appeared to be more introverted types compared to their classmates.

“Hi, Mister Wayne.”

“Hello, Donald.” Bruce shook the kid’s extended hand, always pleased to be introduced as Jason’s father, which was a new development in their relationship. “So what are you boys working on here?”

“We’re working on an experiment to recreate John Dalton’s theories on a smaller scale.” Donald politely but enthusiastically explained as he pointed to their cut and glued text paragraphs.

“John Dalton as in the _atomic_ theory of John Dalton?” Bruce confirmed as he read their poster with a raised eyebrow. “I do hope you two aren’t trying to blow up the gymnasium.”

“Obviously not.” Jason scoffed with a wave of his hand. “We’re just going to mix a little hydrogen and a little oxygen in a ballon and ‘poof.’ Totally safe practises.”

*

> 9:34 P.M. / PRESENT DAY

He flinched at the explosion.

Breathing heavily and having broken out into a cold sweat, a pale, tormented man tossed this way and that as if he was physically trying to escape his all too frequent nightmares. Flinching again as if he were receiving heavy blows to the head, blue eyes snapped open wide and his expression was horrified as he disorientedly stumbled out of bed to splash his face with shockingly cold water.

He wouldn't let him sleep. None of them did, really. 

The children gnawed at the edge of his consciousness, scraping his nerve endings raw while challenging his sense of justice. Both Batman and Bruce Wayne couldn't take it. He couldn’t just sit by and do nothing. 

Not like he did with Jason.

The exhausted but still determined Batman leant back and tapped a button below the steering wheel, making the batmobile's canopy slide open with a faint _swoosh!_ before the caped man climbed out with the gloomy Gotham sky serving as a background.

He tried not to think about the empty feeling of exiting the vehicle alone without a certain brightly-uniformed child by his side.

A certain depressing feeling hung over the corruption-filled city, with the heavy aroma of trash riddling the muggy streets surrounding as he touched a transmitter on his utility belt, making the Batmobile's pneumatic pistons push the canopy closed.

The area behind the concert hall was in a more historic part of Gotham and for once the man _wasn’t_ grateful that there weren’t any security cameras around. 

In his earliest years operating as a vigilante, he would go around either during or after cases and patrols, erasing as much video and photographic evidence of himself as possible. Now, with this being the last known location of a missing boy, the lack of footage was an investigative roadblock to overcome.

Tapping the side of his cowl to switch to lenses that could pick up recent heat patterns and movent, he deemed the scene untouched enough to begin formulating theories.

Blending in with the shadows as he stalked the scene, Batman considered the fact that since the Brinks’ were one of Gotham’s wealthier families, Donald could have been being held for ransom. But then again, considering no ransom demands were made in the two weeks, it forced him to speculate other theories.

Switching to a different lens filter that could pick up different trace evidence types, fallen tobacco ashes garnered the Dark Knight’s interest enough to find a smashed Marlboro that was partially kicked underneath a back dumpster. Noting the lipstick stain that was still visible, he placed it into a clear evidence bag that he removed from his utility belt.

“Alfred,” Batman called out to the elderly man he knew was on the other end of the commlink, though he didn’t wait for a response after hearing the click of the receiver before making his request. “I need you to compose a list of missing kids who meet the general description of a Donald Brinks’ in the state.”

“Doomed to be typecast forever.” Alfred sighed from the cave as he faithfully brought up the information his once-charge required. Though his voice sounded old and tired, neither of them brought it up. It had been a hard past few months for all of them.

“Would you like me to go through all three dozen names, sir? The city alone accounts for a dozen of them.”

While the sheer number of missing youth in Gotham ignited a contained fury in Bruce’s chest, he feared what he might do should it escape him even more. So, as always, he controlled himself by remembering his rules.

Donald was, unfortunately, a plain sort of looking boy, who had one of those faces that could easily be mistaken for others. This fact clearly didn’t help his case though it did help further a building hypothesis. Considering Donald had been taken right after his practise concert, it wouldn’t have been farfetched to surmise that a kidnapper would have been following him long enough to learn his schedule. 

“Just send me the dozen names, Alfred. I can do the rest myself.”

As the passing headlights of a car hit his black body armour, throwing his shadow into disarray, the Batman snarled, moving swiftly and silently back into the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Donald Brinks is an actual comic character! I stumbled upon him in Batman Annual #9, where Bruce mentions that he and Jason had worked on a science project together. Naturally, I decided that I simply had to write him in a fic somewhere.


	2. And My Son is the Living

> 10:11 P.M. / PRESENT DAY

A waft of cigarette smoke carried away from the group of gathered men as a late summer night breeze wisped through the crisp night air.

They didn’t pay much attention to the Buick that had just pulled up to the security gate, where it was routinely checked and allowed to pull through into the long, winding lane up to the mansion they guarded, as they were engaged in a fierce debate. 

“Haven’t you been reading the paper, Mick? The Bat’s either disappeared or gone insane.”

“My money’s on some kind of rampage. Did you hear what happened to the Joker? He broke nearly every bone in his body and has the clown on life-support down in Arkham. Not that I’m complaining, mind you.” A third voice chimed in with his two cents. 

Normally Mick, as the most senior security personnel employed on the estate, had no patience for campfire tales—but there in the pale moonlight, with only flashlight beams to grant limited visibility, he couldn’t seem to shake the slight tingle of a chill at the base of his spine for some reason.

This feeling seemed to be justified when the sudden inexplicable sound of a cape fluttering down had them all turn and go rigid at the sight of a black apparition bathed in moonlight. 

It did not move.

Charlie, the youngest man there, stood rooted to the spot, a choked gurgle in his throat as if he'd just seen his own death. The black figure seemed to have these huge, terrifying bat wings that flapped in the wind as it advanced despite Mick pulling out and training his gun at it, shouting for the figure to freeze.

Unbothered, or perhaps just uncaring, the dark figure drew closer in a deliberate, menacing manner, and Mick, never being one to hesitate in his duties, fired twice, getting in two clean hits that knocked the strange black figure down to the ground, unmoving and seemingly dead.

It was then that they overcame their fear enough to notice a yellow oval with the emblem of a bat on its chest.

“Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit…” Charlie started to panic, breaking out into a cold sweat and shakes. “Did we just kill Batman?” 

“Shut up, kid.” Mick swatted him upside the head, even if only to disguise how unnerved he was at what had just occurred. “Bill, go check to see if he’s still breathing.”

“You _shot_ him _twice!_ I’d be more scared if he still was!” Charlie was in a full-blown panic now as they all watched the single armed man creep hesitantly closer to the dark knight before crouching down and leaning over him to check for vitals.

He then let out a strange, pre-verbal scream as his arm snapped neatly back with a loud crack and the black wraith, nightmarishly undead, got back up to its feet with no delay in cause and effect, and rushed towards them like a bat out of hell.

*

> 5:34 P.M. / APRIL 27TH / FOUR MONTHS AGO

Panic turned to fear. 

Some instinct, some inner voice, was sounding a warning. 

The Magdala valley had a stillness which was abnormal, a stillness that made his heart beat faster than appropriate as he walked through the smoking rubble, searching desperately for his son. Not Sheila’s—damn her, _his_ son.

Then the intimidating black-figure stopped abruptly dead in his tracks, struck dumb by the sight before him.

There was something odd about the way Jason was lying, half-buried under a girder with his burnt and bruised limbs splayed out at unnatural angles, all broken most likely. The realisation was slow in coming as he tried to deny what he knew must be, checking for a pulse he knew wasn’t there. 

There was nothing there. No warmth of the skin, no breath in the lungs, no mischievous smirk playing on the boy’s mouth with a clever twinkle of his blue-grey eyes.

_No, no...! Not Jason...he’s too young...I didn’t—I should have—there was so much left to…_

With a cry of wrenching anguish that broke the stillness, the Batman flung himself at the heap on the ground, feverishly removing the collapsed rubble and brushing away the dirt, before gathering the boy to his chest with a single, broken: 

_“...Jason...”_

Cradling his son in his arms, Batman pulled the boy’s stiff body onto his lap and rocked him, calling his name over and over, great tearing sobs welling up from deep inside his chest. “ _Jay_...my son, my boy,” he repeated over and over again, utterly heartbroken as he lowered his face into the still body’s neck as sobs racked his own.

Unknowingly, it was then that something deep and forbidden snapped inside of the dark knight.

*

> 10:20 P.M. / PRESENT DAY

The Brinks’ family home stood on the outskirts of Gotham City, like many of the wealthier-owned properties did, including the more famous homes of founding families such as the Wayne, Kane and Elliot estates.

Parking his Buick in the sprawling garage, the silence seemed tense and brooding to the patriarch of the family, feeling a sharp pain in his chest at the loss of violin music filling the halls as he climbed the rear staircase to find his wife.

“Candice!” He wandered into the study, where the woman in question could often be found, crying over her missing son’s sheets of music. However, this time, she was not clutching bound papers but instead staring across the room, looking as if she might pass out at any moment.

“Welcome back, Mr. Brinks.” A frightening black apparition with blank white eyes spoke in a rasping whisper, making the other man jump at his shadowy presence from the corner of the room.

“B—Batman? What can I do for you?” His tone was nervous due to the dark intruder in his home, unabated by the fact of him being a hero recognizable on an interplanetary level.

“Had your son mentioned anything about being stalked just before his disappearance?" Batman cut straight to the point, toning down his usual growl in an odd display of abstruse sympathy for their missing boy.

“No.” Mrs. Brinks spoke up, rubbing some warmth back into her upper arms, which were covered in goosebumps. “If he had, we would have mentioned it in our police report.”

“Hn.” Batman’s expression seemed to grow darker at this, almost as if he didn’t like their answers before he turned to slink away into the shadowy recesses of the exterior hall.

“...Wait! There was this woman.” Mr. Brinks called out in recollection before the vigilante could completely disappear, making the figure pause in his departure.

“Woman?” 

“I don’t know much other than the fact that Donald was somewhat creeped out by her, but I never thought she was doing any real harm. He said she would just sit in her car and stare at him whenever he left practice but nothing else really.”

*

The Batmobile roared from out of the darkness as thunder rumbled in the distance and it raced down the pulsing heart of downtown Gotham, a living neon nightmare of big-city corruption.

“Stalking, sir?” A rather proper English accent questioned from the other end of the touchscreen video display built into the backlit dashboard, which Batman tapped a few times to turn up the audio receiver. 

“Trust me, Alfred, there’s a connection to be had when a dozen boys, all of a similar age and appearance go missing.”

Sharp blue eyes behind white lenses flickered down to the lipstick-stained cigarette contained within the evidence bag next to him.

“Well, far be it from I to question the world’s greatest detective,” Alfred rolled his eyes good-humouredly but went about researching what his foster son/employer requested, going silent for a few minutes as rain began to hit and then trickle down the windshield, becoming longer as it snaked and connected its watery dots. 

In the center of the city, the sound of honking horns could still be heard through the heavy downpour while pedestrians opened their umbrellas or raced for cover from the sudden and unexpected storm.

“It seems that while not all of the missing boys reported being stalked by what appears to be the same woman, a concerning majority did.” The butler’s voice came back through the video call as he hummed thoughtfully.

“Has this woman been identified yet?”

“I’m afraid not, sir,” Alfred responded from the screen in the car. “I’m looking into the police databases now and all they seem to have in evidence is a single blurry surveillance photo, which of course, shouldn’t pose much of a problem for the cave’s superior technology to clear up.”

So with a few ticks and clicks, Alfred managed to name and then pull up the last known address of their suspect for him on the GPS of the screen, while Batman swung the wheel of the batmobile and sped up a side street, the turning wheels creating a spray of water from a puddle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While originally a two-parter, I've decided to split this work into three chapters. (Which will sadly also mean I need to find a new and less cool chapter title as well...😞) It was getting kinda long for me since I work best in mid- to short length wordcounts and I felt like my writing quality was going down with it. Hence, I've decided to cut it and do better in a fresh chapter. 🤗


	3. Let It Be Neither Mine Nor Thine

Just off of the southwest corner of the southernmost point of Gotham, the Tricorner district was a roughly triangular-shaped island, most notably home to the Tricorner Naval Yard, which was decommissioned by the U.S. Navy in 1975 for reasons unknown though easily guessed considering the city’s general reputation. 

A foghorn wailed in the distance as an armoured black vehicle came to an abrupt halt, water spraying up from the wheels. 

While some regarded the cry of a foghorn as a mournful sound, the dark figure who leapt out from the car and onto the wet pavement was too focused on his current mission to pay it any attention.

Besides, it wouldn’t do him any good to dwell on _everything_ he had lost already. It would never be any good. And it was never quite enough. He could never do enough to stop people from dying or bring back the... _dead_. No. He couldn’t think about the dead. _He couldn’t._

There was a missing boy⏤a boy _Jason_ was once friends with⏤possibly being held hostage and still alive in the run-down house before him. And that would be all he would think about for now.

The old Officer Quarters were a cluster of residences located just off the actual docks and down a now isolated and bumpy road, thick with overgrown foliage and woodland trees. 

Willie Saunders⏤the woman of suspect in the case⏤had grown up in one of these homes as her father had been one of the senior-most navy officers residing on the premises. She would have therefore been familiar enough with the layout to choose it as a safe hideout. 

Sneaking around to the back of the house, the detective found a cellar door locked only with a simple padlock and chain that he easily broke into, descending down into the cold stone-walled basement as the door closed again behind him.

Immediately, a sickening smell he was unfortunately all too familiar with hit his nose.

As he switched his cowl lenses to night vision, the sight of metal-barred cages lined against the basement walls horrified him. Not because he wasn’t used to all the unspeakable madness that he full well knew Gotham contained and was capable of throwing at its populace but because of how sickening the sight was.

Inside the cages were the missing boys, some with most of their limbs cut off and others with cord or rope wrapped around their neck but all of them were similar in one aspect⏤they were dead.

And he was too late. Again.

Guilt, rage and a thousand other darker emotions rose to the surface as he knelt down before the cages in mourning for the children whose lives had been prematurely cut short. 

It was in moments like these that he wondered why he didn’t just break his one useless rule that seemed to bring about more failures than anything else and get rid of such vile inhuman criminals permanently. Like they took his parents. Like they took his son.  
  
His first oath after all was to kill a man—Joe Chill—in order to avenge his parents’ deaths. And then, after Jason...cradling his boy’s cold, dead corpse...losing him was too much to continue carrying on with his old ways. So even if his remaining friends and family all left, even if he were doomed to become forever alone and solitary, he would at least have the cold comfort of not allowing anyone else to get caught up in the seemingly dark maelstrom that surrounded him.

Across the dim room, something moved, shaking Batman out of his depressing thoughts as he turned his head to see a shadowy outline of a moving boy inside one of the cages.

“Donald?” Batman crossed the room hurriedly to see the boy thankfully alive though visibly traumatised, shaking as he pushed himself up into a sitting position without what appeared to be broken arms.

Before the fifteen-year-old could get out a word, however, his eyes widened as he tried to warn the dark knight about something behind him but was too late as a baseball bat came swinging and his head smacked against the cold basement floor with only the kevlar lining of his cowl saving him from a concussion, though the impact still left him dazed.

_Stupid, careless...didn’t survey the room first...why did I have to rush in like that?_

Groaning as he tried to turn to see his assailant, the last thing he saw was Willie Saunders levelling a gun towards him before the loud shot went off, causing his vision to blacken. 

_Because you had to protect them...I had to protect him..._

*

> 11:14 P.M. / APRIL 24TH / FOUR MONTHS AGO

They had been hidden in the warehouse among some wooden crates for almost an hour, and Batman could sense Robin getting impatient. 

The fact of which wasn’t odd in itself considering that while Batman could wait for hours, motionless, calm, and breathing slowly and deeply in a state of controlled dissociation, it wasn’t something that the teenager he worked with could also say about himself. 

Robin seemed to be unable to stop shifting his weight and clenching and unclenching his fist, running out of patience for the moment they could bust the child pornography ring, which had already taken three weeks to track down.

_"Kiddie porn. Of course one of those freaks would have to—"_

_"Freaks?" Batman interjected._

_"Child molesters. Baby-rapers, paedophiles, whatever you want to call them," Jason spat out, an uncharacteristically dark look creeping in his expression. "To me, they're freaks, okay?"_

It wasn’t as if Batman didn’t understand where his restlessness was coming from. Jason was someone born uncomfortably entrenched into the very Gotham that they were ‘warring’ against and his understanding of certain crimes came from various traumatic experiences he rarely shared but with which allowed him to connect to the victims they rescued on a more personal level.

But sometimes...just sometimes, his emotions became too much. Not only could he feel this connection to people that would make him cry for hours once he made it back into the cave and up to his room, he had this dark anger that would arise in him for those who were being threatened or abused and seemed to feel everything—pain, sadness, anger, fear, joy—being naturally emotive in ways that both concerned and endeared him to the people in his life.

“ _Robin!_ ” Batman made to reach for the yellow cape as the boy lost his patience and dashed out from behind the crate. “What do you think you’re doing?!”

“What I was trained to do!” He fired back, diving into the gathered ring of child pornographers and startling the men who began firing their guns at the colourfully-armoured vigilante.

Batman had no choice but to follow into the fray.

He should have known something like this would happen. Jason had only been acting _oddly_ as of recent, becoming increasingly reckless and aggressive while showing no regard for his own safety. 

And while Jason had always been far too self-sacrificing, never one to hesitate for even a moment before throwing himself into the line of fire to protect someone else, the trait had only grown more apparent as he got older, becoming something that terrified Bruce far more endlessly than to know what probable lengths the boy would go to in order to protect a victim like Gloria Stanson. 

While he tried letting his son channel his emotions through crime-fighting, something that had worked for both him and Dick, it had only seemed to make Jason’s mental health worse, being constantly thrust back into the violence of the streets he was once desperate to escape from.

“Well, that takes care of those freaks,” Robin dusted off his hands, a smirk playing on his expression as he took out the last of the thugs, the bodies of the unconscious men littered all around him.

“ _What_ in the devil was that all about?!” Batman struggled to keep his temper in check, wasting no time in grabbing the teen hero by the scruff of his collar, a lion with his cub⏤or more accurately, a bat with his bird. 

However, he immediately left the collar to placatingly place his hands on the boy’s shoulders upon noticing the severe flinch, mentally cursing Willis Todd yet again.

“I told you to wait, Robin.” His voice softened as he had learned to do with Jason, no matter how angry he was in that moment. “I promised to let Gordon in on the bust and you went ahead anyway. What’s _worse_ is that you nearly got yourself _killed_ doing it.”

“Near misses don’t count.” Jason pushed Batman’s hands off of him and began walking away, a boyish laugh echoing behind him as if his own life was the funniest joke he knew.

And that single thought in itself, that his son thought of his life as some game to not be taken seriously, terrified his father so much that he resolved to have this be the last patrol Robin was ever allowed on again. At least until he figured out what was going on with his troubled little boy.

*

> 12:37 A.M. / PRESENT DAY

With a certain amount of great difficulty, Batman opened his eyes as he woke up to frantic screaming and the sound of Willie Saunders shaking the metal bars of the cage Donald was being kept in.

“Why won’t you just admit it?!” Sobs tore out from her as she shook the bars violently, looking almost possessed in her need for confirmation. “You’re _my_ son! You’re _my_ Peter!”

“I am not! _My_ name is Donald! Donald Brinks! And I already have a mother, whose sure as hell not as crazy as you!” 

The woman screamed in a mix of frustration and pain as she turned from the cage to wave the gun around and walk in circles, mumbling incoherently to herself in a panic. 

Batman only stayed motionless, pretending to still be unconscious, or perhaps dead since the woman thought she had shot him in the chest, unknowing of the extra armour placed there. And as the case all came together for him laying there despite his headache, he hated how sympathetic her motivations were sounding to him. 

She was a _murderer_ and the taking of life was the crime that transcended all others in his eyes by monstrously erasing its victims. It was the ultimate evil and the most unforgivable action to him. So why did he...understand?

“Fine, fine.” Willie took a deep breath and exhaled slowly before turning back around and pointing the gun at Donald. “I guess I’ll just have to keep looking for my baby _\--!_ ”

Just before she fired another shot, Batman rushed forward, tackling the woman and knocking her aim off as he wrestled the gun away and held her down, making Willie start screaming all over again while thrashing about this way and that.

Finally, after getting a pair of bat-cuffs snapped over her wrists and another moment to continue her shrieking, she stopped screaming and tried another tack: sobbing pitifully. 

“Don’t you have any _idea_ what it’s like to lose your own _son_?” Willie’s voice was anguished as she glared up at the cold white lenses with tears streaming down her face. “Your _child_?”

Suddenly a rush of memories both heartwarming and breaking flooded over the man as he thought about a certain child of his who had loved the colour green, classic literature, baseball and neapolitan ice-cream. A child he had only lost four months ago.

“ _Just hurry back!_ ” That had been the last thing Jason had said to him before he _left_ him, the whirling of the helicopter blades making the boy hold up his hands to protect his face.

For a brief moment, the impossible depth of the man’s grief was visible as he stood over the woman, his gaze distant and fathomless in its display of a lifetime of loss.

“God, I wished I didn’t but...I do... _I do_.” 

*

Police cruisers surrounded the old house and covered the scene with strobing red and blue lights, the bright colours and cascading downpour of rain reflecting off the building to give the bricks a polished look.

Off to the side and almost out of sight, Donald Brinks stood somberly wearing a shock blanket as busy legs splashed through puddles that reflected both the tragedy that had unfolded and displayed the impact of still-falling rain droplets against wet pavement as paramedics took the non-surviving boys out in body bags.

As Batman stayed in the shadows, he watched as Willie Saunders was taken away, her head being ducked into the awaiting vehicle by one of the uniformed constables.

But that wasn’t what he stayed behind to watch over.

As a black Buick pulled up to the scene, Mrs. Brinks didn’t even wait for the car to fully stop before dashing out towards Donald, clearly having jumped out of bed the second she received the call as she was still dressed in pyjamas and held no umbrella, pulling her son into a tight embrace, which he collapsed into just as his father got out and joined them in the hug as well.

Watching the family reunion, Batman stepped back to disappear completely into the shadows before pulling back his cowl and leaning tiredly against a back shed wall, allowing the rain to dampen his hair and stick to his forehead.

Though Bruce Wayne was already in his early forties, it was often remarked upon that he didn’t look a day over thirty. Except for his eyes, which were old beyond his years. Too old. And it was at times like these that his eyes seemed more fitting to belong to a war veteran who had witnessed far too many horrors.

Looking down at his once blood-stained hands for a removed moment, he thought of a troubled but loving little boy he would never get to reunite with himself before he finally clenched them tightly and walked off into the lonely dark night.

*

> 3:10 A.M. / NOVEMBER 12TH / THREE MONTHS LATER

A cold rain drenched the city streets, washing away the dirt and grime. Metal bars and shutters guarded the closed-up shops and piles of garbage were strewn along the sidewalks.

Well after midnight, a solitary figure in a thin hospital gown sought shelter beneath the unlit marquee of a vintage movie theatre. Icy raindrops trickled down his neck as he stood atop a soggy newspaper by the light of a nearby streetlamp. 

The boy didn’t appear to be more than a short fifteen and had his head partially shaved to reveal a line of stitches, which he ran an uncoordinated hand over with as he shivered in his sopping wet hospital gown and muddied bare feet.

Gusts of wind blew the driving rain into his face, making it difficult to see, and though he moved as if he were a marionette puppet—all strings and no consciousness—he was able to make out a small clothing store across the street which triggered his baser instincts of finding warm, dry clothes. 

Shoes wouldn't hurt either.

Pressing both hands to the glass window to stare at a warmly-dressed mannequin, an identification tag reading ‘Patient #265: John Doe,’ could be seen right before he smashed the glass and carefully entered the shop, oddly mindful of the sharp glass shards that were scattered around the inside.

Watching where he stepped, the otherwise unthinking boy pulled on the hoodie and other items of clothing the mannequin had worn before stumbling back out of the store, now single-mindedly thinking of sustenance no longer provided by an intravenous line once supplied for him at the convalescent home.

Stumbling along as he placed one foot in front of the other, something bright suddenly lit up the sky, making the brain-damaged adolescent look up with confusion visibly etched across his features. 

“... _Bat...man.._.?” He managed to forcibly croak out one of the few words he was left with working memory of. 


End file.
